China today started work on a 41.36 -kilometre fast transit rail linking south Beijing to the upcoming new airport in the country’s southern Daxing district, authorities said. The new airport line will allow trains to run at maximum 160 kph, the fastest intra-city rail transit in the country. The line will have just three stations. Passengers can check-in to their flights at the starting station — Caoqiao — located by the Third Ring Road and reach the airport terminal in just 19 minutes, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The line is being built by a public private partnership and will open in 2019 with the launch of the new airport, the state-owned Beijing Urban Construction Group was quoted as saying by the news agency.

Beijing’s new airport is being built in the Daxing District to ease traffic at the Beijing Capital International Airport. By 2019, the Chinese capital will have two major airports, one in the south and the other in the north. The new airport will have four runways and can accommodate 620,000 flights per year by 2025. It will eventually handle 100 million passengers and 4 million tonnes of cargo a year. Read more